So do tracking tools work or not? - 

 

by Adam Greenberg  July 18, 2014

 

People spend a lot of time concerned about getting their information off the internet and out of the hands of organizations that collect it, but the concept of obfuscation – injecting false, misleading and ambiguous data – can be an equally effective privacy tactic.

 

At hacker conference HOPE X, which kicked off Friday morning, the subject of obfuscation was a hot topic spoken about by Daniel Howe, a critical technologist who focuses on networked systems for image, sound and text, and on the social and political implications of computational technologies.

 

Initially drawing comparisons to radar chaff, loyalty card swapping and the famous “I'm Spartacus” scene from the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film, Howe introduced a few recent “do it yourself”-style obfuscation tactics used to muddle up some of the data that groups are collecting on users.

 

TrackMeNot, a tool that Howe helped create, provides “privacy in the context of a web search,” by sending “fake, but realistic

queries,” essentially “hiding your interests” by “polluting the engine's search logs,” Howe explained.

 

Howe is also one of the creators of AdNauseum, a software tool that he said is designed to block ads in the user's browser – much like other ad-blocking software – but also to click on the ads in the background, therefore making it so a “data profile is diluted with noise.”

 

But does any of that noise really matter?

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